


this is gonna take me down

by fliptomybside



Category: BBC Radio 1 RPF, Figure Skating - Fandom, One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-19
Updated: 2018-02-19
Packaged: 2019-03-21 09:23:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13737894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fliptomybside/pseuds/fliptomybside
Summary: Nick and Harry have been skating together for 20 years. Harry thinks this is it for them.





	this is gonna take me down

**Author's Note:**

> Guys, I know absolutely nothing about skating but Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir are soulmates, I don't make the rules. This is the brainchild of [Mary](http://blindf0rlove.tumblr.com) who was like, HARRY AS SCOTT AND NICK AS TESSA yesterday afternoon and my brain was like, can't stop won't stop! And here we are. Again, I know literally nothing about skating (why is it called ice dancing? is that new? didn't it used to be figure skating? are they different things? anyway.) but this is a Gryles ice dancing au loosely based on the partnership of Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir because I have no self control. Title from Wildest Dreams - Taylor Swift, unbeta-ed so all mistakes are mine, please don't let the real people that this is about see it, etc. etc.

“It shouldn’t take you this long to choose a sauce, Harry,” Nick says, leaning against the counter at Nando’s. 

The cashier looks bored and Nick can’t blame him. Harry just flaps a hand in Nick’s direction and bites down on his lip, squeezes his eyes shut, then blurts out, “I’ll have the mango, please, thanks.”

At least he’s still polite, Nick thinks, rolling his eyes. He watches Harry dig some change out of his pocket, fingers struggling to get into his worn black skinny jeans. Nick squints at them. He’s pretty sure they’re from the Topman they spent hours wandering around in New York two years ago, but he can’t be sure. Harry’d dragged him into the changing room and Nick had tried not to stare at the winter-pale skin of Harry’s thighs as he tugged the jeans up his legs. 

“Nick,” Harry says, and Nick blinks.

“What?”

Harry rolls his eyes, a dimple pressing into his cheek. 

“Food’s up, c’mon. Weren’t you the one nagging me just now?”

“Harold,” he says, but Harry’s grabbing their food and tugging Nick out of the restaurant by the hand before he can finish his sentence.

He’s not sure what he was going to say anyway.

It takes about two seconds for Harry to get honked at when he pulls out into traffic. He doesn’t look bothered, just waves at the person who honked at him, like that’ll negate the fact that he just cut them off.

“Haz,” Nick starts, the Nando’s bags bleeding heat where they’re perched on his thighs, “you can’t wave at someone after you’ve cut them off, mate. It’s just not right.”

Harry shoots him a confused look and tries to plug his phone into the dash one handed. Nick lets him struggle for a minute but takes over when Harry glances down and gets too close to the car in front of them for comfort. He slaps Harry’s hand away and plugs the phone in, puts it on shuffle. 

“It’s polite, Nicholas. You should thank people when they let you into traffic.”

Nick snorts.

“You didn’t give him a choice, H, but all right.”

Harry just reaches over and flicks Nick’s leg, humming along to Rihanna, because he’s nothing if not predictable. 

“Know you wanna see me nakey, nakey, naked,” he sings under his breath, voice cracking slightly, and Nick swallows and looks out the window.

It’s dark out, the dim lights from buildings flashing by, and Nick lets himself get lost in it. He rests his head against the cold glass and listens to Harry sing, effortlessly and unfairly in tune. 

They shouldn’t have gone for Nando’s, he knows, but it’s their last hurrah before they really have to crack down on training. Nick hates diets about as much as he loves competing. He pokes absently at his stomach and tries not to dwell on the fact that Harry doesn’t have nearly as much trouble staying in shape as he does. 

Harry double parks outside of Nick’s flat, but he at least puts his hazard lights on. Nick opens the bags, sorts out whose is whose, and puts Harry’s on the dash. 

“This never happened, right? We’re in agreement?” 

He shakes the bag of food at Harry and expects to see a grin on Harry’s face but Harry’s biting at his lip again instead, blinking slowly at Nick, hands still on the steering wheel.

“What,” Nick says, his mouth going a bit dry because Harry’s got that look on his face that he always gets when he’s about to say something he knows Nick doesn’t want to hear. 

“This is like--this is it, right? For us.”

Nick blinks at him. His whole body’s frozen, Harry’s words tumbling around in his brain, like if he puts them in a different order they’ll mean something else. 

“What?” he croaks, then swallows.

Harry’s biting his lip hard enough that Nick can see it split. 

“Stop biting your lip,” he says, because he can’t say anything else.

“Sorry,” Harry says needlessly, because it’s his lip, not Nick’s. 

Nick lets the silence settle between them for a minute. Thinks about four years ago. Three and a half, really, when they were in a froyo shop in LA and Harry brought up taking a break. A weird euphemism, because people don’t take breaks in ice dancing, they just retire. 

“Can’t even say the r-word, can you,” Nick had joked, but his hands were clammy and it took Harry a second to smile, and even then it was forced. 

“You’re right,” he’d said after a pause, “shouldn’t do it if I can’t even say the word.” 

And that was it. Nick had wiped his sweaty palms on his sweaty thighs and they took a walk down Melrose before they went back to their hotel and everything was fine. 

Harry’s being more definitive now. He might not have said retire, but this is it for us is the same thing, Nick’s not that much of an idiot. All of a sudden he feels like he doesn’t belong in Harry’s car anymore, which is a weird feeling because he practically co-owns this car, went with Harry to the dealer and test drove it because Harry was too afraid to, never mind that Nick’s got a worse record with driving than Harry does. 

“I mean,” Nick says when it becomes obvious that Harry isn’t going to say anything and refuses to look anywhere but his own lap, his shoulders hunched up by his ears like he wishes he could disappear. 

“If you’re done I guess I’m done,” he finishes after a minute, because he can’t make himself say the r-word either and there’s a tiny, microscopic part of him that thinks if neither of them can bring themselves to say it then it isn’t something they want--Harry wants--after all. 

His voice sounds horrible and fake and he waits for Harry to call him on it but Harry doesn’t. He looks up at Nick, at least. His eyes are teary which fills Nick with inexplicable rage that he doesn’t want to let Harry see. Joni Mitchell’s singing about drinking a case of you and Nick loves her but in this moment he hates her. 

“Getting old, anyway,” he says, unbuckling his seatbelt and wishing he could just evaporate. 

He waits for Harry to tell him he’s not that old but Harry doesn’t, just gives him a watery smile before Nick stumbles out and shuts the car door gently. 

“See you at practice,” he says faintly, even though he knows Harry can’t hear him through the car door or over the traffic and the curt honk Harry gets from one of Nick’s neighbors for being double parked. 

He waves awkwardly and turns away, bolts for the stairs down to his flat before Harry can say or do anything else that’ll ruin Nick’s life. 

Pig’s clicking around inside. Nick can hear her before he even gets the door open. She jumps up, sniffing at the bag of food Nick had forgotten about. 

“Hey Pig dog,” he says, his voice croaky and alien, “you had dinner, remember?”

Predictably, she doesn’t answer, just thumps her tail at him and looks up at him beseechingly. Nick kicks his shoes off, puts the bag down on the coffee table, and lets himself land facedown on the couch. 

_This is it this is it thisisitthisisit_. Harry’s words are still bouncing around in Nick’s skull. Nick hopes he gets stuck in traffic. He doesn’t want to let himself think about it any more deeply than that, doesn’t actually want to wish ill on Harry even if he kind of does in this moment. 

_I hope your fries are soggy_ , Nick thinks viciously, _I hope you got a large fries and they’re soggy_ , because if he doesn’t think about the cold state of Harry’s food then he’ll do something horrifying like cry. He can hear Pig nosing at the bag of his own food, but he can’t pry himself off of the couch and he’s not hungry anymore. Just as well, really, he shouldn’t have been having Nando’s at this point in their training schedule, but he feels viscerally angry about that. That Harry’s fucked up not only his whole life but also Nando’s for him, because Nick’s never going to be able to look at a chicken wrap without remembering this moment again.

He’s probably going to cry soon. He can feel the ball of it burning in his throat and he tries to swallow against it unsuccessfully. It’s hard not to mentally flip through the last four years to try to pinpoint all of the signs that Harry was still looking for an exit.

 _Found one, didn’t you_ , Nick thinks, letting his eyes go hot with tears, because Pig’s eating his fries now, he can hear her, and Harry’s just ripped the rug out from under his entire life. Funny you’re not half as graceful off the ice as you are on it. He lets himself sink into the hurt for a second. Revels in the way it burns up his chest from the inside out, until Nick’s half convinced he’s actually having a heart attack. He chokes out a sob and digs his fingers into the couch and tries to take a deep breath. 

It’s easy to remember young and gangly Harry, his skin still spottier than Nick’s, the way he charmed everyone at the rink, up to and including Nick. It’s harder to remember the first time they met. It should be looming large in his mind, probably, but truthfully it doesn’t. His early memories of Harry are blurry. Rose-tinted and easy and only what Nick wants to remember and none of the rest. 

Twenty years together in every way but the way Nick wants them to be together and Harry tells him he wants to stop in his car outside of Nick’s flat and ruins Nando’s for Nick forever. Just in time for Nick to actually be allowed to eat it guilt free for the first time in living memory. 

Pig must’ve gorged herself because Nick can’t hear her slobbery chewing anymore. He doesn’t want to look at the damage she did, but he knows he won’t be in any shape to practice in the morning if he stays with his face buried in the couch like this, so he heaves himself up, head throbbing from crying and eyes hot and puffy. Pig’s flopped on her side, tongue hanging out of her mouth. His Nando’s bag is ripped open and there’s a single fry sitting on the floor. 

“Hope you enjoyed that,” he says to her. 

She doesn’t even look guilty about it, just thumps her tail against the wood floor of Nick’s flat and pants at him. Nick doesn’t let himself think about the things all of that grease will do to her insides. 

He tosses the bag in the trash and stands in front of the refrigerator for a minute. Contemplates the container of leftover chinese takeaway that he and Harry had gotten three days ago and decides against it. He throws that in the trash, too. His stomach’s a weird combination of extremely empty and extremely anti-food. For the first time in his life Nick can’t think of a single thing he wants to eat. 

“Fuck you,” he says calmly, letting the refrigerator door swing shut. 

He can hear Pig rolling around in the living room, apparently no worse for the wear. He wonders if she can sense that their whole life just changed. Maybe, because Nick’s never let her have at his Nando’s like that before. He feels his phone buzz in his pocket and it makes his palms sweat. He’s not sure how long he stands there before he digs it out but it would be embarrassing if he weren’t alone, standing in his kitchen and staring down his empty refrigerator.

‘Sorry, probably shouldn’t have sprung the r-word on you like that. Figured we were on the same page, though xx.’

Nick watches the little typing bubble appear and then disappear. Appear. Disappear, and then nothing. 

_You didn’t even say it_ , Nick wants to type, _you didn’t say it so it’s not happening. Also, fuck you._

He doesn’t type any of it, just stares at the screen of his phone until it goes dim and then black and his palm is sweating again. He waits for it to light up again. Waits for Harry to say something else, because that can’t possibly be it, but he doesn’t. 

He doesn’t say anything else, so Nick pads back through the living where Pig’s ensconced herself in the couch even though she knows it’s off limits. He knows he should say something to her but the words get caught in his throat and he just pats her head and tugs at her ear before going to his room instead. He should shower, probably. He smells like fast food and he knows the smell will stick to his sheets and he hates that, but showering requires energy and doing things other than burying his face in his pillow, Harry’s voice still echoing around in his head, so he doesn’t.

-

Crying hangovers, Nick decides, are worse than alcohol hangovers. He’s had his fair share of both of them, happy and sad and everything in between, some of them shared with Harry and one on almost every continent. This might be the worst one of all. 

“You’re old,” he says to his reflection in the bathroom mirror. 

Nick still hasn’t figured out how he manages to dirty the mirror, but it’s flecked and smudgy and doesn’t do his face any favors. He prods at the puffiness under his eyes. It’s worse than usual, probably because of the crying. He needs a shave but he’s running late as it is and he needs a shower more, even though neither will quell the anxious roll of his stomach. 

He blow dries his hair after even though he knows it’ll make him late. It’ll make him late but at least he’ll look normal and Nick knows he’s got the world’s worst poker face but maybe he doesn’t, since Harry assumed they were on the same page. _This is it for us, right_? Like it was a foregone conclusion, like Nick wasn’t on a different page of a different book in an entirely different universe. 

He taps his neighbor’s bumper trying to get out of his parking spot. 

\- 

The locker room’s empty when Nick gets to the rink. His head’s buzzing because he couldn’t let himself listen to anything on his drive over because everything sounds like Harry in his head. Nick kept expecting him to materialize in the passenger seat, terrible posture and rumpled morning curls and all, looking better straight out of bed than Nick does when he makes an effort. 

He’s never been good at walking to the rink in his skates, always has to pad over in his socks, skates in hand, and lace up by the boards. Harry’s on the ice practicing twizzles in yoga tights and the sweater Eileen got him for Christmas three years ago. 

Nick’s fingers feel numb as he ties his skates and he wonders if he’s going to fall flat on his face the second he gets on the ice, because he’s not sure he has any control over his body at this point. He waits until Harry’s at the far end of the rink before he ventures out just to give himself a few extra seconds. Ben’s got Bohemian Rhapsody on and his elbows resting on the top of the board, chin in hand and watching Harry make himself dizzy.

It’s all painfully normal. Even Nick’s legs cooperate, the tension draining out of his body as he glides across the ice, pushes himself hard enough that his thighs start to burn. Nothing’s changed even if Nick’s world has tilted permanently on its axis, thanks to Harry. He tries to lose himself to it. Lets muscle memory take over and focuses on the scrape of his skates against the ice. 

It’s all normal including Harry swooping behind him, sliding his hands around Nick’s hips, and nosing at his neck. Nick doesn’t even flinch and he hates himself for leaning into Harry’s touch. Muscle memory, he tells himself. 

“Guess that Nando’s didn’t slow you down,” he murmurs in Nick’s ear before maneuvering Nick into a lift that makes Ben clap with delight. 

Nick forces himself to relax into it, doesn’t say I couldn’t eat it you complete bastard, definitely doesn’t cry, just bites at his bottom lip because he knows Harry can’t see it and goes through the motions. 

“Feel a bit heavier, Nicholas,” Harry teases when he puts Nick down and tangles their fingers together, Nick going with it because he can’t not, because he’s almost sick with relief that even if everything’s changed, at least this hasn’t. At least his body still knows what to do with Harry’s even if it’s only on the ice. 

“Fuck off, Harold,” he says, and if his voice sounds a touch harsher than usual, Harry doesn’t say anything. 

Nick watches his smile droop at the corners of his mouth.

“We can’t all be models on the side,” he says airily, because he’s said it hundreds of times since Harry signed that deal with Nike and it makes Harry blush every time. 

Harry blushes and skates off. Nick watches the long lines of his legs because there’s going to be a time in the near future when he won’t be able to stare at Harry anymore. Definitely won’t be able to stare at the curve of his arse in leggings. 

They’re both sweating by the time practice is over. Nick watches Harry pull his sweater up and off, the thin white t-shirt he has on underneath doing nothing to hide his tattoos. He stares at the rose on Harry’s arm and scratches at his thigh, traces over the matching rose he has there. The one Harry talked him into at least five years ago. 

“Nick?”

Nick blinks at Ben who’s looking at him expectantly.

“Sorry?”

Ben purses his lips but doesn’t repeat himself. Nothing important then, Nick thinks to himself, and zones back out. He can feel the heat radiating off of Harry’s body and wishes he could move a few centimeters away. 

-

Nick takes his time on the way back to the locker room, hopes that Harry’ll take the hint and vacate it quickly. He doesn’t, of course, because Harry does what he wants, social conventions and what Nick wants be damned.

“Fancy a lunch?”

Nick knows he should definitely eat, especially considering he didn’t last night and his refrigerator is empty and he does actually want to win another gold. Food is energy and so necessary. 

“I do, but I have to take Pig to the vet,” he says, the words tumbling out of his mouth before he can really think them through.

It’s--it’s a lie, but he should probably check in on her after the amount of grease she ingested last night, and a walk would do the both of them good. Nick can get a smoothie and a salad at Starbucks on the way back to his flat. 

Harry’s brow wrinkles with concern and Nick fights the urge to reach out and smooth it with his thumb. 

“Just shots,” he says with forced cheerfulness, answering Harry’s unasked question. 

“I could come,” Harry offers, worrying at the split in his lip. 

Nick can’t stop staring at it, the way the skin of it gets redder and redder under Harry’s teeth, and it takes everything in him not to reach out and gently pull Harry’s lip free before it starts to bleed again. He forces himself to look down at his bag when he answers.

“Nah,” he says, “‘m all right. She’ll be worked up enough as it is, doesn’t need another distraction,” even though they both know Pig’s calmest when the both of them come with her to the vet’s. 

“Okay,” Harry says after a second, and Nick forces himself to zip up his bag and sling it over his shoulder and doesn’t let himself look at Harry.

“Enjoy your afternoon, Haz,” he says, and it feels weird not looking at Harry, but Nick knows he’ll cave and eat all of his words if he turns around and sees Harry straddling the locker room bench like he always does, curls sweaty at his temples and thighs too muscled for their own good.

“Right,” Harry says faintly enough that Nick can hardly hear him when he lets the door swing shut behind him. 

-

Pig’s fine. She greets him at the door like always, falling all over herself and putting her paws up on his thighs and panting, little yips escaping even though she knows she’s not supposed to bark inside. She skitters off to the kitchen after a second, her nails clicking on the floor, and Nick lets his bag drop by the door even though he’ll hate himself later for not airing it out. 

He stuffs the salad he picked up in the fridge and clips Pig’s leash to her collar when she trots back over. 

“Ready for some exercise?”

Nick knows she can’t smile but it looks like that’s what she’s doing and he needs that today, so he smiles back at her around the straw of his smoothie and tugs her toward the door.

It’s just starting to get nice out. June in London is always finicky, but Nick loves it anyway. No one needs to see him covered in sweat and wearing shorts for three months, thanks. The smoothie feels cold in his stomach the way drinks always do when Nick hasn’t had enough to eat, and he’s had to police his eating enough over the last twenty years that he’s used to it. 

He won’t have to worry about it soon. Policing his eating. He’ll be able to eat whatever he wants. Get fat, never leave his couch, let his body soften into mediocrity. He should be happy about that. March isn’t that far away and it’ll be over then. Retired. Nick’ll be retired. He’ll never experience the run up to the Olympics or Worlds or anything like it ever again. He and Harry won’t be living in each other’s pockets anymore because there won’t be any reason for it. He’ll probably have to buy a whole new wardrobe because nothing’ll fit after the first month. 

His phone buzzes in his pocket once, twice. Nick ignores it because it’s probably Harry and because he has nothing to say to Harry. It’s that or his mum, and Nick knows she’ll be able to figure out something’s wrong the second he calls her. 

He’ll have to tell her eventually. Probably sooner rather than later, that they’re splitting up. Retiring, rather, because it’s not like Nick would skate with anyone but Harry. He wonders if she’ll be surprised. He can’t decide if it’ll hurt more if she is or if she isn’t. They’ll have to tell Ben, though if Nick knows Harry at all, Ben already knows. 

No one’s out even though it’s nice out. The upside of walking through London on a Monday after lunch, Nick supposes, letting himself sit at an empty table next to the Barry’s Bootcamp Harry likes to frequent. Pig flops down next to him and rolls around on the sidewalk.

“You’ll need a bath now,” he says futilely, “and you hate them. Famously hate them.”

The last time Nick gave her a bath, Harry helped. She’d splashed both of them and Harry stripped off his shirt halfway through. Nick couldn’t stop staring at his wispy chest hair and Harry smirked at him when he caught Nick looking.

“‘M a real man now,” he said, and Nick rolled his eyes and blushed.

That was a week ago, and Nick wonders if he should’ve seen it coming then. If he’d been subconsciously giving off a sign that he wanted to throw in the towel himself, and Harry was doing all of this to give him an out. 

Unlikely, Nick thinks, sighing before he tugs Pig back up.

“C’mon,” he says, “home for a bath since you’ve been a brat.”

The thought of giving her a bath on his own is enough to make Nick forget about the text messages on his phone until he’s elbow deep in lukewarm bathwater and his hands are full of wriggly dog who wants to be anywhere but the bathtub.

“Pig,” he pleads, and she just whines and tries to escape his grasp, water splashing up over the rim of the tub. 

Even his phone is damp when he pulls it out of his pocket half an hour later, Pig cowering in her bed and still damp because she wouldn’t let Nick dry her properly. 

“This is your own fault, love,” he says, and it hits him that this is going to be his life all the time soon. 

Alone in his flat and talking to his dog because he doesn’t know how to exist without the next skating thing to drive him forward. 

The texts are from Harry. Nick shouldn’t be surprised because approximately ninety five percent of his texts are from Harry, but it still makes his stomach drop uncomfortably. He has to actually open them if he wants to read them. He’d turned off the message preview ages ago after Harry sent him a close up photo of his moth tattoo and his mum got an eyeful of it before Nick could turn his phone over. 

‘ _Hope the vet went okay_ ,’ the first one says, followed by ‘ _hope you’re okay xx_ ’

“It is,” Nick says out loud, “unclear what you’d like me to say, Harold.”

This is is his life now. Talking to his dog and himself. Having one-sided, rhetorical conversations with Harry in his head. 

_I’m okay_ is probably what Harry wants him to say. Nick’s fairly positive about that, but he can’t imagine how Harry could possibly expect that from him. _I love you_ is probably something else Harry wants to hear, because if there’s one thing Nick knows it’s that Harry’s compulsive need to be loved by everyone is even stronger than his own. And Nick does love Harry. He loves Harry but not in a way that’s comfortable or convenient for Harry. 

His fingers start dialing his mum’s phone number before he can second guess it. He flops down on the couch, his thighs twinging at the impact, and listens to it ring.

“Hello?”

Eileen sounds out of breath. Nick makes a mental note to have her take Pig on morning walks.

“Hiya,” he says, “how would you feel about an impromptu visit from your favorite child?”

-

It takes him a half an hour to pack even though he’s only planning on staying for two days. He should be better at the packing thing by now, but he’s managed to exceed the weight limit for checked baggage more than a handful of times. He has to sit on the suitcase to get it to close, but he manages it. 

“C’mon Pig,” he calls, rolling the suitcase into the living room and shrugging on a hoodie. 

She looks at him warily from her bed, clearly not sure if she should trust him after the bath. He rolls his eyes. 

“Don’t look so betrayed, come on.”

He wrangles her into the car without much difficulty and cracks the windows just enough to get some fresh air in the car. It feels good to get away from London, and Nick takes it as a good omen when he gets out of his parking spot without hitting any of his neighbors’ cars. Pig’s panting happily at him from the passenger seat and Nick puts on Radio 2 because Harry never listens to it.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm [here](http://polaroidgirlfriend.tumblr.com) on tumblr.


End file.
